


Codenames

by iluvaqt



Series: DC & Marvel: Nightingale [4]
Category: Captain America - All Media Types, Smallville, The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Cellphones, F/M, Mutant Powers, Post-Avengers (2012)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-22
Updated: 2015-09-22
Packaged: 2018-04-22 21:24:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,023
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4851032
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/iluvaqt/pseuds/iluvaqt
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Steve tries to contact Chloe and overhears a very strange conversation and a disturbing noise. Chloe's friends find out she has an interesting way of sorting Caller ID.</p><p>Set after The Avengers movie.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Codenames

Steve picked up his small cellphone and dialled Chloe's number. At first it rang out.

He tried not to feel discouraged. 

The team shawarma eat out had been a disappointment. The chips weren't crunchy and the meat was so greasy, the oil had ruined the taste of anything else. The only saving grace of the entire experience was that they were enjoying a nice, quiet meal with no danger of being blasted with energy weapons or having an alien ship crash through a wall, and Loki was bound and magically gagged, sealed in Tony's panic room at the tower with JARVIS monitoring him.

He'd showered in Tony's suite, on one of the lower levels of the Stark Tower and borrowed a set of plain clothes. The only thing he could fit in of Tony's was a sweater and running pants, which were still snug but fit better than any of the business shirts and slacks the enigmatic man had tried to dress him in.

"You're not dressing to impress," Tony said his tone disapproving and his expression all but petulantly pouting.

"She's seen me in the uniform, Stark. She's not going to be impressed by anything next to that."

"Oh you poor uneducated man. Cap, a woman always wants you to put in an effort. And what might put the fear of God into some HYDRA punks isn't going to cut it with the ladies."

Steve smirked. "Obviously your father never told you about all the times he begged me to leave the uniforms at home."

Tony wrinkled his nose in distaste. "I don't want to know what Pops got up to in his heyday. But as for you, Mr. straight laced, prim and proper, unless those ladies ended up in your bed, I'm calling your success questionable."

Steve reddened. "Must you be so vulgar?"

"I'm helping you keep up, Gramps. It's the modern age you're living in, you’ve got to learn the way of the world. Left to your own devices we'll be seeing you as a hermit with only your dog for company."

"And if I've found myself a successful, respectable young woman?" Steve asked on a growl, his patience wearing thin.

"I bet your blonde's all fire under that cute wholesome exterior. She'll eat you for breakfast, my friend. You need to up your game if you want to play for keeps or you'll find her slipping through your fingers. Old school charm and chivalry will only get you so far."

Steve snorted and picked up his duffle bag that held his uniform and picked up his shield with his free hand. "I've managed just fine on my own.”

“You’ll be wishing you listened to my advice later,” Tony called after him.

“No I won’t,” Steve muttered softly. Tony’s list of model and actress dalliances might be ten times longer than his rap sheet but the number of girlfriends he'd had could be counted on one hand. He wasn’t going to take advice on women from a man who’s only successful relationship came about from Pepper Potts’ unshakable loyalty and patient suffering of the man’s incomprehensible ego.

The call rang and rang, and just before he resigned to hearing the generic message prompt again, a voice he didn’t recognize picked up.

“I don’t know who Dorito is, but you're pretty persistent.”

“Impulse, you did not just answer that,” an exasperated voice chided.

How did you even get past the lock screen? Chloe’s got more security measures on that thing then the FBI have firewalls,” a distant voice interjected.

“Hey.” The one named Impulse protested. 

“Sorry, wrong number?” a vaguely familiar voice said. Although right that second, Steve couldn’t place it, beyond the fact that this man and Impulse seemed to know each other. “Darn it, I can’t turn it off.”

“Did you just use her thumb print? That’s got to be a new low. She’s unconscious. And how do you know her passcode?” Impulse sounded petulant, as though it were monumentally unfair that the other man seemed privy to more secrets than he was.

Then there was the sound of a gunshot and the connection died. Steve stared at his phone, baffled and rattled. Who had Chloe’s phone and what the heck had just happened? He didn’t like the feeling that had settled in the pit of his stomach. With trepidation, he reached over for the cordless phone on the coffee table in the lounge area and dialed the operator. “EJ’s on 6th Ave, please.”

“I can give you the number, honey, or for a dollar plus call charges I can connect you.”

“Just connect me, thank you.”

“EJ’s, can you please hold.”

The woman didn’t even wait for an answer, just went ahead and put him on call waiting. He listened to a jingle on repeat for five minutes before she came back.

“EJ’s, what’s your order?”

“I’m not ordering, I….” The call ended, and Steve stared at the phone. He’d been on hold for five minutes and the woman had just hung up on him. 

He dialled the operator and this time he took down the number.

“EJ’s…”

“Ma’am, normally I wouldn’t interrupt but I’ve called once already.”

“If this a crank call or a telemarketer, I’ll get my boyfriend to hunt you down and put a world of hurt on you. I don’t have time for crap time wasters.”

Steve heard handset squeak and crack in protest under the strain of his grip. Oh she didn’t just try to threaten him. He had risked his neck to protect the citizens of New York and this was the thanks he got? “I was meant to meet someone at your diner tonight but I couldn’t make it…”

“Sorry buster, but if you stood her up, you can kiss your chances goodbye. Never leave a girl hanging.”

“Can you please let me finish. Lord give me strength, is there no common courtesy left in this day and age?” Steve ran a hand through his hair and squeeze the back of his neck, he was fast developing a monster knot there.

“Okay, Gramps, I’ve been patient...”

“Have you? I really couldn’t tell,” Steve countered. The woman had reduced him to teeth grinding and his left knee was bouncing. She’d made him revisit past nervous ticks, he hadn’t gotten this worked up in years. “Did a young woman with short blonde hair, pretty smile and green eyes come in alone tonight? She might have been wearing a jean jacket.”

“For real, this is getting creepy. We’re not a dating service. Please don’t call back.”

Steve resisted the urge to growl at her for her unhelpful attitude and hurl the phone at the wall. Instead he silently counted to ten in his head and breathed calmly while hitting the END button. He didn’t care if it was Chloe’s favorite eatery, he was never setting foot in EJ’s. He might do something very un-Captainly.

He was no closer to discovering what had happened to Chloe, or if she was okay and it was making him agitated and stressed. Steve didn’t do nervous, he always had a plan. Fear was a tool. A means of motivation, something to feed his determination to succeed whether it was escaping a fight or putting bad guys down, or finishing a mission. He needed to get to the bottom of this mystery but how and where did he start. Aside from Maria Hill, he didn’t know who else knew Chloe personally.

At the risk of sounding like a teen with a crush, he sucked in a deep breath and put a call in to the Academy. They could forward his call to Commander Hill’s office.

::: ::: :::

"Dude, you are gonna be in so much trouble." Bart, a.k.a Impulse stared wide-eyed at the smoking gun and back at what was left of Chloe's phone in Superman’s hands. Her lifeline, the beloved Q1 device that had her wi-fi, her gazillion apps, and her picsagram phone list that had persons unknown, named Dorito for a Caller ID was dead never to ring again.

"This is a secure room. No devices bar medical ones allowed. You answered an unknown caller, and identified yourselves via Agent Sullivan's encrypted scrambled phone."

"Only a handful of people have that number, Agent Coulson." Maria collected the remains of Chloe's phone from Superman, a.k.a Clark Kent, and Chloe’s longest, oldest, childhood best friend.

"You didn't hesitate," Clark said glaring at the older man as he folded his muscled arms over the impressive emblem on his chest.

"Please, it's a SIG P226. I've seen 50-calibre rounds bounce right off you. Neither of you seemed to be in any rush to turn off the damn thing, I made a call."

"A pretty drastic call," Maria snorted. Short stuff was right, Chloe was going to be mad. Probably mad enough to want to kick Phil's ass even though she'd just healed him.  
If Agent Coulson had been anyone else, and not wearing a hospital gown, Maria would have put him under a world of hurt for daring to take her side-arm. Without a word of apology or a hint of remorse on his face, he offered her the hilt and she holstered her weapon. He was in a testy mood but since he’d only taken his first breath after being legally dead for the past two hours, even though as his superior and acting power of attorney, she refused to turn off the machines until Chloe had arrived, she was cutting him a little slack. Being impaled and then pieced back together had to be disorientating. The costumed duo showed up almost the second Chloe did her golden flower trick. Being the only non-powered and unarmed person in the room was making her uncomfortable. The weight of her SIG was making her breathe a little easier already even though it was plainly obvious it would be useless against Superman and Impulse could probably disappear before she could even blink.

"You and I, we aren't done,” Phil said turning his unyielding glare on Maria. “I need to get dressed and we'll be having a conversation."

"Joy," Maria deadpanned. "I look forward to it." 

Phil was such a stickler for rules. Normally she was too, but sometimes exceptions had to be made. And really, once she'd heard what had happened to her dearest mentor and friend, wild horses couldn't drag Chloe away. They would have had better luck selling Easter Bunnies to the Chinese. Chloe was stubborn and bullheaded determined once she set her mind to something. From the side of the conversation she’d witnessed, Clark hadn’t fared any better than she had at dissuading Chloe from her plan. Even when it was obvious to Chloe herself that the exposure, questions, scrutiny it could raise and Phil's disapproval should have stayed her hand.

While two of her superhero friends kept watch on their unresponsive patient, Maria waited for Phil in the other room of the secure medical safe house that Fury had moved Phil to after the specialist surgery was unsuccessful in restarting his heart. After finding him on the holding cell deck, bleeding out, he'd been rushed to surgery where they'd repaired the torn chambers and severed arteries of his heart. 

"You should have let me die. I should have stayed dead," Phil ground out at her, slamming his hand on the tabletop she was leaning against. "You know it, they know it. There's no assurances with her ability. No one understands the science and her cells are in a constant state of flux. There's power in her blood. It has unlimited application and everyone who's seen what she can do, knows it. They would give their lives to keep her out of a lab, and so would I. I promised her I would protect her. And damn it, Hill, she needs protecting. She's her own worst enemy. She has no sense of self preservation when it comes to the people she cares about."

"What would you have done? Drug her? Keep her drugged until you're six feet under? Isn't it her choice to make?" He was probably still naked under those paper thin scrubs he’d changed it to, but it definitely covered more than the white tie-back gown he’d been wearing before. He was also sans footwear and she was towering over him but he was standing toe to toe with her and he wasn’t backing down an inch. She had to give him props for his commitment to his standpoint and this dressing down he was intent on giving her.

"What about my choice? Who are we to decide who lives and who dies?"

"You're so ready to die?" she asked eying him speculatively. 

Phil was devoted to the job, he barely had a personal life. Not that she could point fingers but he'd been at this longer than she had. And he had one failed engagement and a string of short relationships in the past two and a half decades. She wondered whether the job was enough for him anymore. That he seemed so intent to let it all go.

"In our line of work, aren't we all every time we step out that door?" Phil countered giving her a shrewd look. "I'm surrounded by people with superhuman abilities. Some are even god-like but they can still be hurt, even killed. I'm human. My special skill is my resourcefulness. I know what to use and when to use it. I absorb all the information I can get my hands on. I was never the fastest or strongest or even the most skilled, but I was the best tactician of my class. I know my limitations and Chloe needs to know hers. She can never do this again. Especially not for me. Are we clear?"

"Crystal," she said crisply.

"What does Director Fury know?"

"I've known what you've been sitting on for a while, Agent Coulson and while I'm hurt you didn't share, I accept and understand your reasons."

Phil swung around, surprised and unsettled by Fury's appearance but he didn't outwardly show it. He stood a little straighter and made no apology for keeping Chloe's power a secret. "How are you planning to proceed on this, sir?" 

"You made a miraculous recovery. I'm sending you to Tahiti on a well deserved break to recuperate. When you return you'll be heading up a roaming team operating out of the new S.H.I.E.L.D Airbus. Agent Sullivan will continue her work with powered individuals and report directly to Commander Hill."

"And her record?" Phil pressed.

"Her blood and her powers will remain off book," Fury concluded.

Both Maria and Phil inwardly sagged in relief. 

"You might want to have someone fix that, before Sullivan wakes up," he said over his shoulder as he left. It seemed that everyone knew how attached to her phone Chloe was.

Phil had been eying Leo Fitz for his brilliance for awhile. Restoring Chloe's fifth limb was going to be a good field test. But having a costumed, speedy superhuman in the lab couldn't be helping the graduate's concentration however. 

"I've retrieved all the data from the memory and uploaded it into a virtual drive while the new phone is on express order. Her coding is genius but not unhackable. It'll take me a little bit but I will crack the encryption and then I can start looking into tracing that call."

"Boy Scout, knows the passcode if that helps. And he used her thumb print for the biometrics," Impulse suggested helpfully.

Phil glared at him. If the younger man kept talking, he'd start spilling things Fitz wasn't given clearance to know. If Impulse didn't stop the motor mouthing, he was going to shoot him to see if the drain on his metabolism would slow him down any.

"A passcode would make things go faster," Leo said looking up at his prospective boss. Phil's stoic stare had him shrinking. "But I can work around it."

There was a sharp gust of wind and everyone knew the Speedster had been and gone, trying to make himself useful. "Passcode is 417339. And I have no idea what that means," he said with an exaggerated slump, as he dropped into the swivel chair behind them.

"Don't you have people to save? Perps to catch?" Maria asked as she entered the lab bearing a tray of drinks. One promptly disappeared from the cardboard coffee holder.

"Thank you."

Maria rolled her eyes and set the tray down on the desk, clear of all the tech Leo had laid out. "At least he has some manners," she said under her breath.

"There,” Leo said with a triumphant wave at his laptop screen. “I have her call list and contacts…” he scoot closer, using his cursor point to scroll down through the log. “And they make absolutely no sense. They're all images, no names. Odd. Dorito, ham and cheese sandwich, a stick of dynamite... sunglasses?"

"Thank you, Agent Fitz,” Maria said turning his chair away from the desk. “We can take it from here."

Leo blinked and rubbed his hands on his trouser legs, his gaze bouncing between between them all. "Okay. If you need any help uploading the operating system and information to the new device, give me a call."

"Thank you, Agent Fitz. And officially, you never saw me," Phil reminded him.

"Yes, sir."

When the young scientist left, Phil smirked at Maria. "You're an explosive?"

"I'm bad-ass," Maria said with a quirk to her lips. "Mr. Uber Cool with the Dirty Dog sunglasses," she chuckled with a snort. "But who's the tulip? A boyfriend?"

"Oh Licious, knew she had a little torch for me," Impulse put his hand on his heart dramatically, a goofy smile plastered on his face.

A burst of snickering came from the other room that had blinds drawn. 

"I wouldn't laugh, Mr. Ham and Cheese sandwich!" Impulse hollered.

Maria's phone buzzed at her hip and she frowned at the number before picking it up. "This is Hill, how did you get this number? And why are you a Dorito?" she asked, recognizing the number from Chloe's call list and speaking out-loud without a second thought.

"Commander Hill?” he asked, confusion bleeding through his voice. “I really can't answer that."

Maria smiled so wide that her cheeks threatened to split. She'd seen the man in uniform from behind and there was no doubt that he was a fine specimen of male physique in peak condition. And yes, if you liked making analogies with food, his shoulder to waist ratio did resemble a Dorito chip. She snorted back a laugh and had to bite her lip and squeeze her eyes shut before she could answer without busting a gut over Chloe's quirky sense of humor.

"What can I do for you, Captain?"

"I was trying to get in touch with Chloe. We were supposed to meet up but I couldn't get away till late and then I thought I'd call first. Is she okay? I heard what sounded like a gun shot and I haven't been able to get through since."

Maria sobered thinking about why Chloe wouldn't have made that dinner date and that she wouldn't be answering the phone anytime soon. There was no set timeframe to her power reset. Although Superman was sitting vigil and seemed to have every confidence that she would wake up. Maria liked his confidence and his optimism.

"I haven't seen her, but I'll be sure to pass on your message when I do," she lied.

"Thank you, Agent Hill. I appreciate your help." Steve hung up and stared at the phone. Maria Hill had just lied to him. The man named Impulse had called him a Dorito when he called and Maria had just said the same thing. It wasn't a coincidence.

He'd give it a day. If he couldn't reach Chloe in twenty four hours, he'd pay Maria a personal visit and find out why she was stonewalling him. 

::: ::: :::

"Eighteen hours, Chloe," Clark said gravely as he pressed a glass of water into her hands. "Eighteen hours of not hearing a heartbeat or even a seeing a single cell move in your body."

"Oooh that's... " she shivered involuntarily, and made a show of drawing up the blankets higher while eying him with a pointed look and an arched eyebrow. "You can see detail that closely?"

"Chloe, I can see the swirling gases on Jupiter and I can read DNA without a microscope. I know yours like the back of my hand."

"Wow, way to suck out the mystery in a relationship, no wonder you haven't made it down the aisle yet," she joked.

"Are we going to get to the part where I was figuring out how to tell everyone that you died? For real this time?"

"I'm not dead, and I'm guessing neither is Phil, since he's not in here and I am." She smoothed down the sheet covering her legs. Suddenly her head snapped up and her hands fisted in the sheets. "I had a date. Well sort of. I don't really know."

Clark grinned. "Wouldn't happen to be with a food item, would it? I didn't know you were such a big fan of cheesy corn."

Chloe slapped his arm, and tugged on his cape. "That's for the invasion of privacy, you big dork. Now where's my phone."

"Your friend Phil shot it to bits."

Chloe's jaw dropped and her eyes threatened to bug out. "He didn't! I thought he'd be pissed but why? What'd Q ever do to him."

"You call your phone Q?"

"I love Bond movies, so sue me. Give me your phone," she said holding out her hand.

"Ah..."

"Oh don't be so skeptical. I know how to create a secure line and mask your number," she said rolling her eyes. "Unlike some people," she added under her breath.

Clark snorted. "Why bother, I can hear you perfectly you know."

Chloe stuck out her tongue at him. "Bite me.... oh hey, Steve. No, not you. I was talking to a cape wearing goofball that can't keep his nose out of other people's business. Sorry I didn't make it to the diner. Oh you didn't go? That's awesome...Well it's not but I mean at least it wasn't like I stood you up. Which I would never do by the way. I'd call. Something came up."

Steve smiled at her rambling and his nervous tension melted the longer he listened to her voice. "I really need a better way of reaching you."

"Well I'll get a new phone soon, since someone got trigger happy at my other one. Honestly, word to the wise, never take your frustrations out on tech, it's not fair and cosmic justice will visit you. Tech is not the enemy, people are."

Steve found he didn't agree with her sentiment but he wouldn't voice it. So far his experience with modern technology left a sour taste in his mouth. If he had to speak to anyone on the phone again, Chloe aside, it would be too soon.

"I've got a debrief with Director Fury this afternoon but after that I'm free and I've been thinking of taking a road trip. Ever been interested in visiting Colorado?"

"My cross country challenge wasn't enough for you?"

Steve chuckled. "This is on my terms and I just finished building my new bike. Needs a good long cruise ride. What do you say?"

Chloe let out a breath and eyed Clark who'd heard every word of their conversation. She quirked an eyebrow at him in silent question.

"I can wrangle the team for awhile. You deserve a break, Chloe. Besides we can call you on Q, if we need you."

Chloe rolled her eyes at him but smiled in thanks for his support. "I'm in. I'll text you my address. See you when you get done, Soldier."

"Yes, Ma'am."

Chloe hung up the call, smiling to herself over the teasing she'd heard in his voice and all the ways she might punish him for his deliberate slip.


End file.
